Overcoming Carnal Desires
Today we contemplate the grace of refining our deepest interior attachments, learning how to silence the clamoring voices of fleshly temptations. Join our prayer community for this seventh weekly meditation—the last virtue/vice pairing from Part 1 of the Book of the Rewards of Life—inspired by St. Hildegard of Bingen to anchor your soul in holy desire, allowing the Holy Spirit to purify your heart so you may truly desire the Lord over every carnal thing.
Opening Prayer
Eternal Father, I want to desire the Lord over every carnal thing. Please help me avoid putting the desires of the flesh over the virtue of longing for God. Please let me have the grace to resist temptations for every carnal thing. Help me fight against the temptations of lust, comfort, and greedy appetites. I reject all temptations of fear and ask for the grace to have hope in you.
Jesus, you know all my carnal weaknesses. I want true freedom from every carnal thing that I put above my relationship with you. If you give me the virtue of longing for God and help me overcome any inordinate love of carnal things, I can grow to have true faith in you and this will give me tremendous peace. Help me see myself as a person destined for eternal life with you so that I view my life in the right light and can fully surrender myself to you.
The deeper I understand your love for me, the more I want to love you. I want to love you over every other thing in my life. I have worldly fears and desires. You see them all, and you know my heart. You know everything I lack. Please help me grow in the virtue of longing for God so that I can overcome my carnal weaknesses. You have made me for yourself; let me love you for yourself in return for the love you have shown me.
I know that you love me and if I ask for the grace to change you will give it to me. Please give grace to my intellect and my will so that I may know and love you with all my heart. Let me long for you, Lord, and desire heavenly things over all worldly desires.
AMEN.
Let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice. Although man can forget God or reject him, He never ceases to call every man to seek him, so as to find life and happiness. But this search for God demands of man every effort of intellect, a sound will, “an upright heart”, as well as the witness of others who teach him to seek God.
You are great, O Lord, and greatly to be praised: great is your power and your wisdom is without measure. And man, so small a part of your creation, wants to praise you: this man, though clothed with mortality and bearing the evidence of sin and the proof that you withstand the proud. Despite everything, man, though but a small a part of your creation, wants to praise you. You yourself encourage him to delight in your praise, for you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
Catechism, 30
What Is the Virtue of Longing for God?
The virtue of Longing for God—What St. Hildegard calls Sighing for God—is the soul’s answer to a restlessness that never finds its true rest. His opposing vice, which St. Hildegard names Foolish Joy, isn’t one single craving but a whole disposition: a heart so eager for worldly satisfaction that it will reach for almost anything to quiet its own ache—comfort, vanity, status, possessions, sensory pleasure, distraction, even the desires of the flesh among them. It is a wide, restless grasping Christ describes when he says “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God’ (Matthew 19:24). The danger in Foolish Joy is not any one object of desire; it is the grasping itself, a heart unable to want God above everything else she is grasping at.
This week we’ll meet St. Hildegard’s own unsettling image of that grasping soul, Foolish Joy, and we will walk with Balaam, the prophet whose holy beginnings were slowly swallowed by his hunger for security and gain. As we’ll see in the weeks ahead, this same restless hunger has many faces—and in a future meditation we’ll meet one of its sharpest and most demanding forms in the vice of Luxury, whose desires of the flesh become so demanding she refuses to restrain them. But this week, before we narrow our focus to any single appetite, we begin with the wider picture: a soul that has not yet learned to let God alone satisfy him, and a longing strong enough to finally quiet that inner restlessness wherever it reaches—whether it reaches for comfort, vanity, status, sensory pleasure, or the desires of the flesh.
Those Who Take the Sign of Religion for the Wrong Reason are Like Balaam
by St. Hildegard of Bingen
[God speaks in a vision to St. Hildegard] But many seek Me with a vacillating mind, so that they are marked only outwardly with the sign of religious life, not seeking Me with pure eyes or looking simply about them with true doctrine to see how to escape the Devil who seeks to devour them; as the dove, seeing reflected in pure water the bird that seeks to seize her, takes to flight. But these people do not flee from the Devil when they see him coming…
Example of Balaam
When a person is stirred up in his soul to begin deeds of justice, then with mounting desire he sighs and longs for them, saying, “I, a wretch entangled in so many sins and bonds, yearn to have my soul reject carnal desires and leave behind all malice and wickedness, and, by that contrition which makes the just despise themselves, abide in the dwelling place of good works… That in my good deeds my end may be like that of the ones who do God’s justice, so that the result of my good works may equal the beginning of their just purpose.”
But if the person who says these things is then, when his sighing is over, tempted by evil spirits and conquered by carnal desire so that he returns to iniquity, he does what Balaam did when he was deceived by the wickedness of his greed… Because at first he wanted to curse My people, and I opposed him both by My angel and by his ass; and by My zeal I led him to bless My people with the blessing of the words I placed in his mouth and to desire to be made like to My people Israel in his death. But afterward, touched by the spirit of dissension, he returned to his first separation and scattered that people for a deathly reward by the fornication of his counsel…
Therefore, O human, just as Balaam stooped to wrong desires after first looking upward with righteous longing, so do those who seek Me feignedly. For when they see those who have truly renounced the world go forward sincerely and persevere laudably and truthfully in strict and blessed ways of life, they call them beautiful and sweet, and on sudden impulse undertake their life and want to be like them, but after they have joined themselves to them, as Balaam looked to the Israelite people, they are often recalled to carnal desires, by which they were dominated before, by the various villainies they had in their hearts while still in the world. And when they are thus entangled, they contaminate My chosen flock with poison and hostility, shaking them with storms and scattering them with their wicked counsel.
… They did not call upon Me in their prayers to help them or ask Me to test their bodies to see if they could persevere in their purpose. So I leave them to find out how much their own will can help them when they trust in themselves…
St. Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, Book 2, Vision 5, Chapters 41-42 (Trans. Hart/Bishop, Abridged)
Reflection:
We began this meditation by looking at a man who loves every carnal thing rather than having a longing for God. St. Hildegard recognizes the main obstacle to longing for God is our attachment to the things of this world. We all have them. It’s part of being human in a fallen world.
The Lord reminded me in prayer that Balaam is only one example of a wicked prophet. There are also religious and political leaders who through carnal desires for greed lead people to believe a message is from God when it is not. They seek messages by their own power for a purpose, and the Lord says they will be disgraced. In the book of Micah, the Lord chastises such false prophets and causes them to fall into darkness (Micah 3:5-7).
A Wide Range of Desires are Carnal in Nature
When we talk about “carnal desires,” it’s easy to picture only one thing. But St. Hildegard’s vision of this vice is wider than that. She shows us a restless soul who is reaching for anything the world offers to quiet an ache—comfort, vanity, status, possessions, sensory pleasures, desires of the flesh—anything that will fill the void inside. Foolish Joy is like the rich man who has the means to fill his void, and is constantly grasping for the next worldly thing in order to feel satisfied. A heart that keeps reaching for the world will always find something else to reach for.
The Restlessness of Foolish Joy
St. Hildegard gives us a vivid picture of exactly this restlessness. In Liber Vitae Meritorum, she describes a soul who has surrendered entirely to this craving. Foolish Joy is pictured with the hands of a monkey, the body of a goat from the waist down, feet sunk so deep in shadow that she cannot make out where they lead, and no clothing at all. The figure speaks for itself: “I live a sweet and beautiful life. Why shouldn’t I? God gave me this life. So what if I take pleasure in my flesh? … I know life itself and I want to live it to the fullest.” (Liber Vitae Meritorum, Part 1, Section 13, Para. 24-25, trans. Hozeski).
St. Hildegard explains each part of what she sees. The monkey hands belong to a soul that has the knowledge of good, which it should also change into heavenly inspiration, but instead of lifting that knowledge into longing for heaven, it is full of vanity and bodily comfort. The goat’s body shows a soul that has simply forgotten it was made to reason and govern its own desires, letting itself slide into unthinking, animal habits instead. The feet hidden in darkness are the most sobering image of all: deeds done in secret, never held up to the light of justice, never tested against what is true — a whole hidden life of compromise that the soul never lets anyone, including itself, examine honestly. And the nakedness is the final word: a soul with no spiritual joy left to clothe it, exposed before God, because it sought comfort in everything except him.
This is the same trap St. Hildegard shows us in Balaam. He didn’t fall through one single overpowering sin — he drifted, reaching for security, status, and comfort, letting his guard down one compromise at a time until he was fully entangled. Foolish Joy works the same way. It rarely announces itself as something dramatic. It shows up as the quiet, constant reaching for whatever feels good right now — a reaching so habitual we stop noticing it, and so unexamined that it can hide whole “secret deeds” we’d rather not bring into the light.
The desires of the flesh are part of this restlessness too — Hildegard names them herself in this very vision. But they are one current within a much wider river. Comfort, vanity, status, possessions, distraction, sensory pleasure of every kind: all of it flows from the same source, a heart that has not yet learned to let God alone satisfy it.
This restlessness doesn’t always look like indulgence. Sometimes it looks like fear dressed up as foresight. Think of how many people today chase after doomsday prophecies, then rush to stockpile food, money, and supplies—not out of prudence, but out of a deep unwillingness to suffer anything at all. It’s the same grasping heart, just wearing a different disguise: instead of reaching for pleasure, it reaches for security. Underneath both is the same lack—a soul that has not yet learned to long for God enough to trust him with what it needs.
From Anger to Foolish Joy: When the Fire Burns Out
St. Hildegard tells us exactly how we arrive here. Foolish Joy “follows anger,” she writes:
“because it is, as it were, the revenge and cooling off stage of anger. For when a man’s anger has passed and he is happy, he disgraces his enemies”
Liber Vitae Meritorum, Part 1, Section 74, Para. 87, trans. Hozeski
This is a strange kind of relief, isn’t it? The fire finally burns down, the confrontation is over, and what’s left doesn’t feel like peace—it feels like license. We tell ourselves we’ve earned a little indulgence after all that turmoil. We deserve to feel good again. But this is exactly where Foolish Joy is waiting: not in the heat of the fight, but in its exhausted afterglow, offering comfort, pleasure, and self-satisfaction as the reward for having survived our own anger. She isn’t a separate temptation arriving out of nowhere—she’s what anger becomes once it has nothing left to burn.
A Peek Ahead to What Happens to Unbridled Foolish Joy
Foolish Joy is Micro — one soul’s personal habit of reaching for good things instead of God. But St. Hildegard planted the same seed in Part 4, where it reappears as Desire, the seventh vice in Part 4’s stewardship chain (Week 28). Both vices invoke God as permission — “God gave me this life” here; “people benefit from my possessions” there. And St. Hildegard gives both the exact same symbolic detail: feet hidden in darkness, deeds never tested against what is true. What begins as a quiet personal habit ends — if left ungoverned — as a whole institutional way of life built around the same grasping. We will return to this in Week 29.
How do we Desire the Lord?
I asked the Lord to help me understand how this relates to the virtue of longing for God. He showed me that souls who have attachments to their carnal desires have a fear of suffering and a desire to be prepared for future events. This causes them to seek out divine messages through prophets or seers, so they can understand, be prepared, or be comforted by this knowledge. Their longing is not in God alone, but in self-preservation (James 3:13-18). They seek to gain secret knowledge from these seers that will prepare them or preserve them from earthly chastisements.
But what is the virtue of longing for God? How do I turn away from every carnal thing and desire the Lord sincerely? Am I relying on seers and prophets to guide my decisions in life? Do I know they hear from God (2 Corinthians 11:13-15)? Does the prophetic word I hear give me a sense of fear or does it appeal to my need for self-preservation? The Lord says we should not fear the wicked, that he fights for his children (Deuteronomy 3:22). How can I trust that the Holy Spirit is working and I am not being deceived by the evil one? I do this by growing in the virtue of longing for God, because if I desire the Lord he will give me peace that passes all understanding; I will be graced with the strength to persevere with filial love and trust despite every evil obstacle I encounter in this life.
While spending time with the Lord in adoration I admitted that I love him, but know I do not love him nearly enough. Then I asked Jesus a few questions, “Do I do what you command? Do I obey your Spirit when it moves me?” I wanted to know what it means to have the virtue of longing for God. I want to desire the Lord.
The Lord showed me that a longing for God makes us love him over every carnal desire, every material want, every carnal fear, and human attachment. He is our all and all. When we desire the Lord we have peace, and we can only do this when we have the gift of faith, which he freely gives to those who ask. He led me to the Psalms while I was praying in adoration:
As the deer longs for streams of water,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, the living God.
When can I enter and see the face of God?
Psalms 42:2-3
Lift up Your Hearts to the Lord
Jesus showed me how God desires to bring us into greater union with him, and when we lift our hearts to the Lord, he fills us with a deep sense of belonging, having a true identity, and being loved. At every Mass the priest commands us to do this, to lift up our hearts to the Lord, to “seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1). This kind of experience in prayer grows the virtue of longing for God because when we contemplate his loving protection of our souls – and all the angels and saints worshipping God in heaven – we will naturally grow to trust him with all our spiritual and temporal needs. We recognize we are part of a heavenly kingdom and our King is benevolent and trustworthy. We naturally desire the Lord when we offer sincere worship at Mass.
We belong entirely to the Lord. We should surrender fully to his will for our lives in filial trust, after all, we are his sons and daughters and he is our loving Father and Lord of the universe. When we desire the Lord our souls are opened to continual grace. This is what Jesus means when he says he gives us living water and we will never thirst again (John 4:13-14). Jesus is our mediator; he joins us to the Father through the Holy Spirit, our advocate.
Have you ever experienced the hand of God in your life? Take a moment right now to put yourself in the presence of God. Imagine his faithfulness, despite all your past sinfulness. Can you see how God has helped you in your own life, accompanied you in times of suffering, forgiven you, and offered you mercy? Show the Lord your loving gratitude for all he has done for you. When you recognize his constant loving presence in your life this form of prayer shows that you desire the Lord. Ask him to remove your carnal desires and material fears, and replace them with this kind of filial love. Ask for true faith in his guiding hand in your life. Tell him you want a sincere relationship with him and to trust him like a child does a good Father, with filial love and devotion.
Seeing God in the Right Way
Jesus also reminded me about the importance of having the right disposition toward God. Having a longing for God includes recognizing God’s authority in our lives (Matthew 7:28-29). This is important; we must have the proper disposition toward God if we want to be elevated toward loving him during worship. Christians can have an over-familiar disposition toward God during private prayer because we want to relate to God as our friend. In one way this is good as it opens our hearts to conversation with God, but in another way, this limits our ability to have a deep abiding relationship with him. When we pray with familiarity we tend to give God characteristics that we are comfortable with. We might make him into our image, praying to him as we believe him to be through a very limited, and sometimes improper understanding. This hinders our ability to have the virtue of longing for God.
When we desire the Lord for who he is and not for what we want to gain from him, we will praise and adore him regardless of what we are going through. The virtue of longing for God gives us the desire to pray, worship, and love. God profoundly enters our hearts and moves us closer to union with him in this type of contemplative prayer. When you are in a period of intense suffering and laden with inordinate fears, desire the Lord by contemplating the Garden of Gethsemane. Let your heart be lifted up to the Lord. Ponder the magnitude of his suffering for your soul. Understand that he desires a relationship with you and is drawing you closer to his Sacred Heart through this suffering you are experiencing. Ponder his 5 holy wounds and his death on the Cross.
The soul who can desire the Lord understands that without God he is nothing and everything he has and does depends entirely on God. He is in love with the lover of his soul and he longs to pray, to adore, to please the one who has blessed him with grace and quenched his thirst.
Going Further:
Spend some time this week reading the Psalms and contemplating prayers of longing for God. Read Psalm 42, Psalm 142, or Psalm 143 to help you desire the Lord in your life. Take time to journal a personal Psalm of longing for God from your own heart, modeling the Psalms you have meditated on this week.
Let us Pray:
Now that we understand the virtue of longing for God, and we have contemplated how we can desire the Lord more in our lives, let’s begin with a prayer of petition for it.
Prayer For Childlike Trust and Filial Love
Eternal Father, You know how easily my restless heart gets weighed down by the heavy gravity of this world. I confess that when I am faced with suffering or laden with inordinate fears, I am tempted to seek out secret knowledge, signs, or future predictions just to find comfort and preserve myself. Forgive me for the times my longing has not been in You alone, but in my own self-preservation. Break my attachments to worldly security, physical comfort, and the toxic desire to control my own future. By my own willpower, I cannot quiet these clamoring carnal desires. I desperately need the cleansing fire of Your grace.
Jesus, grant me the supernatural virtue of longing for God. Strip away any over-familiarity in my private prayers; stop me from reducing You to an image I am comfortable with or forcing You into my own limited understanding. I want to praise and adore You for who You are, not for what I want to gain from You. Infuse my soul with a holy, unquenchable thirst for You—the living God—so that I can completely surrender to Your guiding hand. Grant me a willing spirit to watch and pray daily, to accept Your authority, and to trust You like a child trusts a good Father with absolute, filial love.
AMEN.
Take a slow, deep breath and settle into absolute stillness. Let go of your daily checklist, your anxieties about the future, and any restless cravings for comfort. As you prepare to encounter Jesus in this reading, remember that He didn’t just teach us to overcome the flesh—He showed us how to defeat it through total, agonizing surrender to the Father’s will.
Do not rush through these verses. Read the words slowly and step directly into the pitch-black shadows of Gethsemane. Look at the intense battle taking place: notice the heavy, sleeping weakness of the disciples’ flesh versus the raw, sorrowful, yet perfectly disciplined spirit of Christ. Jesus experiences the ultimate carnal temptation—the overwhelming human fear of suffering and death—yet He entirely conquers it by fixing His gaze on the Father’s ultimate plan. Ask the Lord to show you where your own flesh is too weak to keep watch, and where He is calling you to surrender your comforts. When you are ready, pick up your pen and write His promptings directly into your prayer journal.
Agony in the Garden
from the Gospel of Mark Chapter 14:32-42
Then they came to a place named Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” He took with him Peter, James, and John, and began to be troubled and distressed. Then he said to them, “My soul is sorrowful even to death. Remain here and keep watch.”
He advanced a little and fell to the ground and prayed that if it were possible the hour might pass by him; he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will.”
When he returned he found them asleep. He said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”
Withdrawing again, he prayed, saying the same thing. Then he returned once more and found them asleep, for they could not keep their eyes open and did not know what to answer him.
He returned a third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough. The hour has come. Behold, the Son of Man is to be handed over to sinners. Get up, let us go. See, my betrayer is at hand.”
Let us Pray:
Jesus, your soul was sorrowful even unto death. The love you have for me is so deep that you obeyed the Father’s will even though it meant enduring a cruel betrayal and the tortures of death on the Cross.
I do not love you enough. I see that so clearly now. Please, Jesus, give me the virtue of longing for God so that I might have the strength to reject every carnal desire and desire the Lord instead. Help me reject fear, greed, lust, and all desires for material comfort. I want to do the Father’s will for my life no matter what. Let my heart burn with the desire to love and obey God in everything.
Lord, help me watch and pray daily; I do not want to fail the test. I recognize the weakness of my flesh and I humbly ask for the grace to have a willing spirit. Let me desire the Lord above every other desire.
Jesus, you are a gift to me. Thank you for being present to me. Give me the grace to be present to you and to grow in the virtue of longing for God. AMEN.
A Prayer for an Increase in Virtue for Others
Lord Jesus Christ, you say that when two or more are gathered in your name, you are with us. Jesus, in your name I lift up every person who has joined this prayer challenge or will join it in the future. I ask you to give us all the grace we need to grow in virtue and holiness so that we may love and serve you in our lives and through the people we love and care for. Help us in our thoughts, our words, and our actions. Guide us all by your Holy Spirit and give us the strength to overcome every temptation from the evil one. We ask all this in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.
This week let us pray for each other to desire the Lord more. I want to express my deepest gratitude to you for participating in this virtue challenge and for your incredible dedication over these last seven weeks. Committing to this level of interior prayer takes profound spiritual courage. You should truly praise God for the hidden efforts you have made to show up, refine your attachments, and give Him your heart; He sees every single step you have taken on this journey.
If you stumble, feel your focus wavering, or find your old carnal distractions creeping back in this week, do not let discouragement take over. If you fail, do not quit trying. Be merciful to yourself and learn to love the daily process of striving to desire the Lord more. Take it one day at a time, take immediate accountability when you slip, and stay in the present moment with Jesus. Being virtuous is a slow, lifelong process of grace. No one is perfect, so just start anew every single time you fail.
Reclaiming the Kingdom: Your Week 7 Send-Off
As you leave this chapel and step back into a loud, material world that constantly tempts you to compromise your faith, chase passing comforts, and settle for the false security of worldly things, guard your interior peace. True longing for God isn’t a passive emotion; it is an active, supernatural force that elevates your soul to trust Him like a child trusts a good Father. You are called to actively govern your desires, protect your prayers from over-familiarity, and look upward toward your eternal inheritance.
To see exactly how the Church equips us with the divine stamina needed to live out this radical, lifelong witness—invoking the ultimate outpouring of the Holy Spirit to be our constant helper, guide, and source of supernatural courage out there in the world—look at the sacred standard laid out right here in the Catechism:
In the Roman Rite the bishop extends his hands over the whole group of the confirmands. Since the time of the apostles this gesture has signified the gift of the Spirit. The bishop invokes the outpouring of the Spirit in these words:
All-powerful God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
by water and the Holy Spirit
you freed your sons and daughters from sin
and gave them new life.
Send your Holy Spirit upon them
to be their helper and guide.
Give them the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of right judgment and courage,
the spirit of knowledge and reverence.
Fill them with the spirit of wonder and awe in your presence.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.Catechism, 1299
Closing Part 1: What’ You’ve Learned About Loving Properly
With this seventh meditation, you’ve now walked through every vice St. Hildegard shows us in the first vision—Worldly Love, Impudence, Jesting, Hard-Heartedness, Slothfulness, Anger, and Foolish Joy. When we reflect on the journey of this soul, from learning what it actually means to love God instead of the world. Early discipleship rarely moves in a straight line. It wanders, stumbles sideways, and slowly, gently, God pulls the soul back toward a life of grace.
Next week we will begin Part 2, and something changes. Where Part 1 asked you to release your grip on the world, Part 2 turns the question inward: can you release your grip on yourself? The next eight weeks trace the steps you need to take to learn to love God above all else, for his own sake.
Make a Resolution
Take a moment to reflect on the virtue of desiring the Lord. What are the ways you can freely practice this virtue this week? Ask the Lord to give you opportunities, and when you feel the Holy Spirit prompting you, take action. Write down your resolutions for this coming week in your prayer journal. Remind yourself to complete these resolutions daily for this entire week, and as the Spirit prompts you, feel free to write about your experiences with this virtue throughout the week.
In My Thoughts:
Jesus, this week I promise to take time daily to conform my thoughts by… (make your intention).
In My Words:
Jesus, this week I promise to take time daily to conform my words by… (make your intention).
In My Actions:
Jesus, this week I promise to take time daily to conform my actions by… (make your intention).
Pray the Litany of Virtues prayer.
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2 Responses
Am heavenly blessed for learning for week 7 in praying for virtues along with you our beloved sisters and brothers. We are heavenly blessed to be one soul. We as countless souls. God bless you and keep you.
Hi Imanuel, thank you very much. Your prayers are very appreciated and I am grateful for your comment today. The Lord is teaching us all so many things through the words of St. Hildegard of Bingen. May God continue to bless you. I pray for you and all the others doing the virtue meditations every day. May God bless us all and help us grow in virtue and holiness to better love him and serve him in this life!